Immortal
by Heddwig
Summary: Rose discovers she's immortal, what will she do now? (Slightly feel good/fluff, slight angst as beginning)


I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Rose hadn't known she was somewhat immortal until those she cared about started to wither and wilt, especially John and Tony. Though she could hardly remember it, looking into the heart of the TARDIS to save the Doctor, she suspected in some odd way that may have been the TARDISes way of thanking her-gracing her with the slightest touch of immortality-for saving her thief.

Sometimes she caught her loved ones giving her crooked glances, envious of her 'sudden' immortality-inability to age and die, as if the Doctor personally saved her for his personal benefit... Rarely but surely they also wondered if he did that to all of his companions; give them such a gift so they could always return to him. But Rose, when defending her Doctor against all of the silly feuds, knew he was lonely; it had been so very apparent when she travelled all of time and space with him.

For support, she'd look to John-the Meta Crisis-because surely _he_ would understand the Doctor's misery and misfortune of always, some way or another, ending up alone. The only true companion he had was himself. And when John averted his eyes or bowed his head, Rose felt stumped and slumped forward, the corners of her lips pulling down into an obvious frown. _Defender of the Earth_, he had said, and for those slight moments she...she felt like the Defender of the Doctor as well. Protector, even.

But how could she save him? How could she make it known that when she said forever, she meant it? How? She was left stranded in the alternate universe, at the time she didn't care about leaving her family and John behind just to travel with her Doctor, the _real_ Doctor, again, and she'd give it all up just to see him again. _Be_ with him again.

Instead she was stuck to watch her family members die. In desperate moments, she'd catch herself working on the dimension cannon, fixing it in whatever way she could so that maybe, just maybe, she could materialize within the TARDIS and leap into the Doctor's arms.

One lucky day however, during an entranced period of grief and mourning, Rose decided to test out the dimension cannon one more time (although that's what she'd keep telling herself, _just one more time_, because she could never give up) and hoped and prayed, tightly shut her eyelids and balled her hands into fists. She concentrated intensely, intently set on her destination...to a place she very dearly called home, or came to know as home before it was ripped from her firm grasp, or what she thought to be a firm grasp.

When she thought everything had been lost as the sound of the cannon faded and she slowly peaked her eyelids open, she thought she'd never see him again. She figured she'd always be alone and she understood then, or understood at least a fraction, of what the Doctor felt on a daily basis. The loneliness in all places, it was never ending.

But then she saw it, the console room-though it looked different-and three figures standing around the bright luminescence. She didn't quite register that the skinny figure in a tweed suit and bowtie with a heavy fringe was in fact the Doctor. So Rose stood there for a while, perplexed as she tried to gather her bearings, and it was when the Doctor turned around to see why his new companions had gotten silent all of a sudden. And only then did she really know.

A slow, cracking, smile spread across her face before it stretched into her famous grin. Her eyes crinkled up and her chest constricted, elation expanding her excitement.

Standing in place, both of them, the Doctor too was bewildered as well but it didn't take him long because as soon as his eyes focused on her, any puzzling confusion he had before simply ceased. He no longer cared why his new companions stopped their bickering because he knew why and glee sparked within him. The loneliness, the utter bitterness, melded into a much darker part of him that only visited in times of rest and true fear.

The emptiness inside of Rose began to shrink as her breathing started to resume, her breaths heavy as first because she hadn't realized just how longer she stopped.

Finally, as if neither of them could stand it any longer, they ran to each other like they had before a Dalek maimed the Doctor. Big, whopping grins that reached both of their ears while they rant toward each other like their lives depended on it.

"Rose..." His voice was soft and coaxing as he exhaled into her hair, smelling her hair that smelled just like lemon and something sweet that he could never decide on what it was exactly. They wrapped their bodies in a tight embrace, holding each other with such strength that it started to put a strain on their torsos but neither of them cared too much about that.

"Doctor..." Rose breathed, closing her eyelids tightly and had a tempting impulse to pull back to search his old eyes before kissing him but he beat her to it. Ignoring the '_ahem's_' from his other companions, the Doctor entangled his fingers into her long, blonde, hair and deepened the kiss to the best he could-wanting so much more than just that, wanting so much more than what he had.

He wanted all of the universes, he wanted to explore her in ways he thought he never would before today.

Having to pull away because unlike the Doctor, _she_ didn't have a respiratory bypass system to sustain the loss of oxygen, Rose took several deep breaths and as soon as her heart rate calmed, she let out a giggle. The same giggle he had missed.

"How long will you be with me?" The Doctor asks, hope and fear mixed together in his deep eyes. Yet he asked because he enjoyed hearing that word come from her, he enjoyed the promise and fulfillment because it allowed him to believe that everything would be alright as long as she was by his side.

"Forever." Rose responds after a moment of stillness, taking hold of his hands.

Now he didn't have to worry about losing her a third time, there would be forever.

But with a wag of his finger, he explains to her they'll have a talk later after they've caught up on the time apart.

* * *

**A/N:** This is a one-shot but it should be loosely related to "Always A Way", my chaptered fanfiction.


End file.
